Name: The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays
Price: 365.00 ZAR
Availability: InStock
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Author: Simon Leys
ISBN: 9781590176207

portada The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays

The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays

Type

Physical Book

Publisher

Nyrb Classics

Author

Simon Leys

Year

2013

Language

English

Pages

576

Format

Paperback

ISBN

1590176200

ISBN13

9781590176207

Synopsis "The Hall of Uselessness: Collected Essays "

Simon Leys is a Renaissance man for the era of globalization. A distinguished scholar of classical Chinese art and literature and one of the first Westerners to recognize the appalling toll of Mao’s Cultural Revolution, Leys also writes with unfailing intelligence, seriousness, and bite about European art, literature, history, and politics and is an unflinching observer of the way we live now. The Hall of Uselessness is the most extensive collection of Leys’s essays to be published to date. In it, he addresses subjects ranging from the Chinese attitude to the past to the mysteries of Belgium and Belgitude; offers portraits of André Gide and Zhou Enlai; takes on Roland Barthes and Christopher Hitchens; broods on the Cambodian genocide; reflects on the spell of the sea; and writes with keen appreciation about writers as different as Victor Hugo, Evelyn Waugh, and Georges Simenon.Throughout, The Hall of Uselessness is marked with the deep knowledge, skeptical intelligence, and passionate conviction that have made Simon Leys one of the most powerful essayists of our time. The Hall of Uselessness is an illuminating compendium from a brilliant and quirky writer and an exemplary global voice.